On The Road

“That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. He asked them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They stopped, looking downcast. . . .”

Luke 24:13-17

Resurrection is not an easy
thing. I should know that by now.

After all, I’ve faced my
share of literal and figurative deaths in the 60 years I’ve spent on this
earth. I’ve grieved the death of my
grandmother and father, of friends and mentors.
I’ve had my world turned upside down by the loss of careers and by the
no-win decisions I’ve had to make to keep my marriage and family intact.

And each time, in the past, I
have found comfort and direction by clinging to my faith that God was with me
and would help me through death to new life.

But the past year and a half have been rough. I’ve dealt with a few too many physical challenges–a fractured sacrum, then a dislocated shoulder, a pulmonary embolism, kidney stones requiring surgery, a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease, then recurrent infections, followed by falls that caused knee, back and shoulder problems. In the midst of all this, we moved twice. I began to think that I’d never recover completely.

All of the physical
challenges wore me down, but the spiritual upheaval took the greatest toll. Although
the issue of clergy sexual abuse and the subsequent cover up by Catholic bishops
across the world is not new, it became even more real and painful to me
starting on the day before Ash Wednesday last year. That’s when my daughter, only 9 months into
her first job as director of music at a Catholic parish in another diocese,
called me to tell me that her pastor had just been arrested for third degree
criminal sexual conduct.

As my daughter struggled to deal with the aftermath of this arrest, I tried to support her. But it quickly became obvious that she needed more help than a mother could give, and the diocese was not going to be providing any help at all. And that fact, coupled with my own past experiences of pain working for the church as well as the ongoing news reports about dioceses and bishops across the country quickly wore me down.

My own parish held listening
sessions in response to all that was in the news, encouraging parishioners to
come together and share their feelings about the issue of clergy sexual
abuse. But I could not bring myself to
attend.

Instead, for the first time
in my adult life, I seriously began to consider whether I could or should leave
the Catholic Church.

It was not a consideration I
took lightly. In the past, when I’ve
been challenged by actions of Catholic clergy or even teachings of the
institutional church, I was always able to take a broad view to place my own
personal challenge in a historical or theological context that gave me hope and
breathing space. I could say, “That
priest is human and only one man; he is not The Church” or “The
institution is not The Church, and it is made up of human beings who sometimes
are slow to listen to the Spirit of God. Just wait. Change takes time.
Wait. All will be well.”

But as Pope Francis called a
synod to address the issue on a global scale, and my own parish began to form
committees in response to their listening sessions, to propose things that
could be done to bring about healthy change, I increasingly lost hope. In my mind, the only thing that could save
the Catholic church would be to entirely transform the priesthood–allowing
both married priests and women priests so that a more just and balanced
leadership could arise. And I knew that
would never happen.

So I entered Lent this year
with a heavy heart and a feeling that this might be the last Lent I spent as a
Catholic. I’ve been depressed and
critical for the past six weeks, reluctantly going to Mass all the while I
pondered where I would go next. My daughter left her job at the Catholic parish
and took one with a Lutheran church nearby.
She said I could always go with her.
Some other friends suggested I try the Episcopal church where they
attend. I signed up to attend a national
conference on preaching with my high school friend who is a Presbyterian
minister, figuring that experience might speak to me.

Then the Triduum
happened.

Three days our world was brokenand in an instant healed,God’s covenant of mercy in mystery revealed.

“Three Days,” by M. D. Ridge

Actually, it wasn’t an
instant healing. I reluctantly went to
Mass on Holy Thursday. I went out of a
sense of duty, in a high degree of physical
pain from my most recent back problem, angry at myself for not just staying
home. But as the service progressed, the
liturgy tugged at my heart and the music comforted me like a warm blanket on a
cold night. I went home with a lot less
anger.

Still, my anger returned on
Good Friday. I had volunteered to sing
at the afternoon service, and honestly, I was once again both mad at myself
(for volunteering) and at the fact that we had to come a full hour early for
practice. But once again, the liturgy spoke to something deep within me, the
music nudging me to let go of my resentment.

Still, I hurt, physically and
emotionally. And I decided that I could
and should skip the evening Tenebrae service, a service that had always been my
favorite. My husband went alone, and my
daughter went to the Lutheran church. I
skipped the Easter Vigil, something I hadn’t done in decades. And I told myself that I didn’t miss them,
that I didn’t care.

Then Easter morning came, too
early. My husband and I had agreed to
join the combined choirs for both the 9 and 11 o’clock Masses. I grumbled all the way to Church. I needed more sleep and a stronger pain
killer. This was a very bad idea, I said
repeatedly.

A view from the choir space a little before Mass began. Photo courtesy of Will Pitts.

And I was wrong. Sure, I was very tired. And standing to sing through two services was
very hard on my aching back. But as the
church filled to overflowing and the familiar hymns rang out, I began to feel
such a comforting sense of being where I needed to be. And during our pastor’s homily, the healing
began.

Fr. Rodger spoke about the need for community and the need to understand the past in order to fully appreciate where we’ve come to–the resurrection. He tied that into the Road to Emmaus story, to how the disciples on the road needed to have Jesus explain things to them.

At first, I wasn’t really following his
comments because he made one small, offhand statement that I fiercely disagreed
with. He mentioned that the disciples
didn’t recognize Jesus, perhaps because he looked different.

“Nope,” I
thought. “You’re wrong. You should
have listened to my sermon on this
story.”

Years earlier, as part of a
parent-child preparation for First Eucharist, I had thought long and hard about
this story and prepared a talk for the children on just that topic. My talk began this way:

Have you ever lost something, but you know that it is
in your room somewhere? Or maybe you are
trying to help your mom or dad get ready for dinner, and they tell you to look
in the refrigerator or the pantry for something—maybe it is ketchup or salt—and
you just can’t find it even though your mother or dad insists that it is right
there, in front of your face?

Of
course, when you can’t find what you are looking for, how many times does
someone else come in and find it right away?
Do you have any ideas why this happens?
My son likes to say that I just know how to look better than he does,
but I don’t think that’s the reason. I
don’t think it has to do with what we see.
Instead, I think it has to do with what we are expecting to find. And lots of times, when we can’t find
something we are looking for, we really don’t think we will find it, so we
don’t.

After starting to tell the
Emmaus story, I mentioned that the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus and
continued on:

Maybe Jesus looked differently, but we learn later
that other disciples recognize his resurrected body, so Jesus must have looked
at least a little familiar. But Cleopas
and his wife didn’t recognize Jesus– they certainly weren’t expecting to find
him on the road, so they just didn’t look carefully enough.

As I remembered this, my
instant of healing began because I realized that I had been the blind one. All
the pain and disappointment of the past few years had turned me into the person
who didn’t expect to find any hope, any presence of Jesus in my church. And so, I hadn’t been seeing any. But hope and Jesus had been there beside me
all along the way.

Finishing that service and
the following one wasn’t easy. I had to sit more than stand due to the pain in
my back, but I began to see things differently and that was a resurrection I
had not expected. Despite all that was and is wrong with the Catholic Church as
an institution, God was present as we gathered.
Jesus Christ was risen, still and always, and the joy of our gathering
proclaimed a hope that I could lean on.
The pain, the brokenness did not disappear and yet, they were somehow
more manageable in community, even in a broken and pained community.

There will be more to this
story. Resurrection is not an easy
thing. I know that, and I will need
regular reminders. After all, Easter is not one day but a season of days, and
every year we must go through it all over again: Lent, Holy Week and Easter.